More SROs than ever, but more needed

Saturday

Aug 17, 2013 at 12:01 AMAug 17, 2013 at 11:40 PM

It’s hard to put a price on the safety of school students. Southside and Altoona are picking up the costs for school resource officers in their cities — something Rainbow City has done for several years.

BY LISA ROGERSTimes Staff Writer

It’s hard to put a price on the safety of school students.Southside and Altoona are picking up the costs for school resource officers in their cities — something Rainbow City has done for several years.The schools are part of the Etowah County Schools system. By the cities paying the salaries for the officers, it frees up deputies to be in more county schools.Southside police officers Jay Freeman and Tim McKee will be SROs at schools in Southside, Mayor Wally Burns said.Freeman will be at the high school and McKee at the elementary school.“We believe it will be good for our community,” Burns said.He said Rainbow City has provided SROs at John Jones Elementary and Rainbow Middle School for years.“We felt like we needed to step up and do our part,” Burns said. “It is something we needed to do.”Altoona voted to place a police officer at West End Elementary School last year after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.The school is not in the city limits of Altoona, Mayor Rick Nash said, but most of the city’s children go there. He said the city is in the process of annexing the property into its limits.“We felt like putting an officer in the school was something we needed to do,” Nash said. “Our residents deserve this.”Altoona and West End Elementary are in a rural part of Etowah County, making it is even more important to have trained officers at the schools.Altoona hired Charles Moody in January and he began when classes resumed after the Christmas holiday. He will be at the school beginning Monday.Nash said it’s tough to come up with the approximately $50,000 needed to pay the officer’s salary and benefits, “but we feel like we have to do our part.”He said he and the council members feel strongly that SROs are needed. “I hope funding will be there in the future to have an officer at every school in the county,” he said.Sheriff Todd Entrekin said by the cities paying for the officers, it frees some of the SROs for more county schools.There will not be an officer, full time, at every school, but there are a few more than last year.“We’ve been able to move some of our officers around and try to have more officers at more schools,” Entrekin said.He said his office has applied for a grant to fund more SROs, but he hasn’t heard whether it will be approved.Entrekin said SROs are the one thing that can make schools safer. He said a School Safety Task Force made a lot of recommendations aimed at making buildings safer, but there was a consensus that more SROs are needed.“All of these things take money,” Entrekin said. “At the end of the day, the main objective and first priority is to add more SROs.”Other school resource officers include Sgt. Lanny Handy, a supervisor at the sheriff’s office; Mike Powell, Glencoe; Robbie Deason, Hokes Bluff; Jon Works, Duck Springs and Highland; Glenn Cline, Sardis, Carlisle and Whitesboro; Phillip Stone, Gaston; and Troy Moore, West End High School, Ivalee Elementary, Career Technical School.The seven officers are Etowah County Sheriff’s deputies. Their salaries are split evenly between the Etowah County Sheriff’s Office and the Etowah County Board of Education. In Rainbow City, James Pickard is at John Jones Elementary and Justin McGlaughn is at Rainbow Middle School.Attalla City Schools have two SROs, funded by the Attalla Police Department. Sgt. Dustin Harris is at Etowah High School and Capt. Jerry Bone is over the DARE program and at the other schools.The Gadsden Police Department pays for Gadsden City Schools’ officers Renza Avery and Sylvia Flick.

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